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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Things are moving pretty fast here in my life. It almost seems too hard to slow down long enough to get something down here to let people know where I am in the process of getting ready to hike the PCT. My lists are too long and I keep losing them in the piles of paper, boxes of food items and bunches of cat food containers… enough for 6 months of munchings. The date of departure has changed so many times and the final, final, really final gear choices have changed around once again. I think NOW I really do have the final gear lineup. I hope…

Speaking of gear (clever segue eh?) I'm doing something different this time around than I have ever done in the past. In an attempt to sooth my afternoon hiking beasts I am going to bring upbeat music to listen to in order to help my tired self to keep moving along towards the end of long days. I've never brought along music before as I have never felt the need, mostly enjoying my own thoughts. But I've learned something about myself that in the late afternoon, when I am tired, hot and my feet/legs hurt, that I can become a Negative Nelly - pissing and moaning about how things just suck and "where the heck is that water source!" I'm hoping that upbeat music pouring into my brain will help me regain a positive mindset and create energy where none exists. On recent training hikes it really does seem to help out towards the end of a day. Cool.

Since I don't know jack about MP3 players, or anything other than boom boxes (and they're way too big to carry) I've taken my information off of a website written by a young woman named Wired who is a thru hiker, having already finished the PCT, CDT and will be hiking the AT this year, completing her Triple Crown. At any rate she is a well of information about gear and especially electronics so I took her recommendations to heart, buying a super small MP3 player and ear buds weighing in at 1.3 ounces and containing up to 1,000 songs. It must have taken me six hours to download (or is it upload?) the songs I wanted to have with me and it required me to learn to translate MP4 music to MP3 songs so they would play on the player. Quite a bit of cussing has occured during this process but I think I now know how to do it. In addition I bought a super tiny, Micro SDHC card reader should anyone wanted to send me music or books on card for my listening pleasure…hint, hint. Contact Angela, who will be the keeper of the cards and reader.

Here is the cute beast with the accessories…

There are more gear posts coming up but I just wanted to get back on here and let people know I haven't fallen into a big hole. I'm just immersed in the piles of details that surround my life at this time.